Areas of the 1960s lining paper and hessian were removed from the wall faces, revealing a brown-coloured paint layer that had been left exposed during the long period in which the room had been used as an office. Removal of the discoloured
surface of this decoration revealed that it had originally been a bright vibrant yellow colour and was in fact the last decora-tive scheme that Soane had applied to the walls of the room (Figs 6 and 7).
Tantalising glimpses of early red, purple and green deco-rations exposed during the investigations suggested that at some earlier date, the room had been very brightly deco-rated. Further on-site investigation established that sections of the east and west walls were originally finished in plaster, and the painted decorations in these areas had been applied over lining paper, while the north and south walls were lined with wood panelling. A series of paint samples was removed from all of the upper wall faces. Initial examination of the mounted paint samples was perplexing as some inconsisten-cies and anomalies were observed in what otherwise seemed to be a consistent stratigraphy pattern. To clarify the sequence of decorations, it was necessary to carry out further on-site revealing of specific areas and to take more paint samples for cross-section examination. It was eventually established that the room had been decorated seven times during Soane’s occupancy. Each step in this decorative process is described in the following sections.
Decoration 1: original decorative scheme (Fig. 8)
Examination of paint samples removed from the upper walls revealed that they had originally been decorated with a dark orange/red glaze applied over a white undercoat. The red glaze contained very fine pigment particles, evenly dispersed (or dissolved) in a varnish-rich oil medium. Examination of the dark orange/red glaze under UV illumination showed the layer to be a tinted varnish-rich glaze.10 When an area of the surface of dark orange/red glaze was uncovered, it was observed that the glaze had been thinly applied over the white undercoat to produce a subtle translucent effect. The brushstrokes of the white undercoat are quite pronounced and provide a striated texture to the top coat of the decora-tion. It is likely that the colour has faded over time, and that the scheme was probably much brighter and richer in tone
7th Decoration 6th Decoration 5th Decoration 3rd & 4th Decora-tions 2nd Decoration 1st Decoration Wood
Fig. 7 Cross-section of a paint sample removed from the wall face panelling (Ref. BBB 45), ×200 magnification. Decoration 1: dark orange/red glaze applied over a white undercoat lies on the surface of the wood. Decorations 2–7 overlie the original decoration. Note two layers of coarsely textured patent yellow at the upper levels.
HELEN HUGHES
when first applied. This decoration is subtly different from the original red decoration applied to the Dining Room on the ground floor, which was described as ‘a varnished deep red similar to that recently instated in the Study at No. 13, but of a more purplish cast’.11 The use of deep red for the decoration in the Dining Room and the Withdrawing Room of No. 12 in the 1790s would have been quite extraordinary.
The first decoration of the room – with its illusionistic blue sky ceiling, delicate red glazed walls, and joinery grained in imitation of blue-grey harewood – was a radical development that evidences Soane’s awareness of Roman antiquity and the schemes applied to the interiors of Carlton House.
Decoration 2: an experimental phase (Fig. 9)
The intermediate decorative schemes discovered in the Withdrawing Room of No. 12 may be described as ‘experi-mental’ and evidence Soane’s interest in panelled wall faces and bold colours. The use of distemper rather than oil paint for the second decorative scheme is perplexing, and sug-gests that these decorations were temporary experiments.
During this period Soane may have been influenced by the work carried out by the Craces at the Brighton Pavilion in c.1801, which divided the wall face into brightly coloured panels. Soane used panelled wall faces in the Library at Pitzhanger Manor (1801), and later offered less radical ver-sions of this decorative style to his private clients. By c.1815, the use of painted panelling of walls had become com-monplace in fashionable homes. During the second phase, painted panel beds were decorated in a mid-green-coloured distemper-type paint. The panel frames were painted in a coarsely textured purple-coloured distemper-type paint.12 A thick black line was applied to cover the junction of the green and purple.
Decoration 3: an experimental phase (Fig. 10)
After experimenting with purples and greens, Soane decided to modify Decoration 2 by repainting the purple frame in a deep red oil paint followed by varnishing. The mid-green-coloured distemper of the second decorative scheme was retained on the panel beds. On-site investigation suggests that this red scheme was applied carefully, retaining the exist-ing black linexist-ing. Examination of further samples removed from the west wall indicates that the southwest panel bed was painted brown (see below).
Decoration 4: an experimental phase (Fig. 11)
As part of the last experimental phase Soane obliterated the original highly varnished light blue-grey harewood graining. He then applied a dark brown paint layer on top, perhaps to imitate porphyry: a dense dark purple-red stone.
The dark red-brown matrix contains large irregular graph-ite particles and is a mixture of an iron oxide red and a coal mineral black. This decoration was not varnished which is perplexing and suggests that a dull finish was desired. This dramatic alteration foreshadows the darker graining Soane was to use at No. 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields. This new ‘por-phyry’ scheme was also applied over an area of the wall face directly above the dado rail, thereby reducing the width of the lower edge of the red frame of the painted wall panels.
Although the dado rail was still in place, it would have been visually ‘lost’. This may suggest that Soane was now unhappy with the low height of the dado rail and wished to create a higher horizontal line within the room. These changes may reflect general changes in decorative fashions. Around 1800, the painted imitation of porphyry was becoming pop-ular as a decorative finish and yet again, Carlton House may Fig. 8 Decoration 1: original decorative scheme. Fig. 9 Decoration 2: an experimental phase.
THE ART HISTORICAL AND TECHNICAL EXAMINATION OF SIR JOHN SOANE’S ‘EXPERIMENTAL ROOM’ AT NO. 12 LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS
have been the inspiration for this alteration as porphyry was used in the entrance hall. The Craces created areas of painted porphyry in the Billiard Room of the Royal Pavilion in 1802, and in 1803 Soane had elements of the Breakfast Room at Pitzhanger Manor painted in imitation of a red porphyry.13
Decoration 5: removal of the dado rail and application of a pink/grey scheme (Fig. 12)
The dado rail, having been visually removed in Decoration 4, was physically removed as part of Decoration 5. This altera-tion may have coincided with the removal of the dado in the ground-floor Dining Room as the detachment of the dado evidently caused some localised disruption. New plaster and a layer of lining paper were applied in the area around and over the damage. The entire wall face was then decorated in a thin layer of a light pink/grey-coloured oil paint. The absence of an undercoat and the utilitarian plainness of the scheme suggest that this decoration was perhaps intended to be a quick temporary scheme.
Decorations 6 and 7: varnished patent yellow (Fig. 13)
The precise dating of Decorations 2–5 is unclear, but they were probably executed before 1807, the supposed date of the application of Decoration 6. The clue to the date of Soane’s sixth and seventh decoration of the Withdrawing Room is found in a bill for work carried out by the Craces in 1807 list-ing the pigments used for the decoration of an unspecified room within No. 12 Lincoln’s Inn Fields; this is identified as
the Withdrawing Room because of the inclusion of the pig-ment patent yellow in the list:
For men’s time and materials at Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
473 [lbs or ft?] of white lead white, 12 gallons of linseed oil, 12 gallons of turpentine, Sundry articles of Copal varnish, lake, Patent Yellow, Umber, Oaker, Vermilion, Purple-brown[?], putty, pumacestone. Bread. Soap & &
including the expense of cleaning and repairing the orna-mental painting, 129 days work for painters, 77,6s.10d.14 The inclusion of patent yellow in the list of materials used by Crace is of particular interest: it was identified in the Fig. 10 Decoration 3: an experimental phase.
Fig. 12 Decoration 5: removal of the dado rail and application of a pink/
grey scheme.
Fig. 11 Decoration 4: an experimental phase.
HELEN HUGHES
last two Soane decorations applied to the wall faces of the Withdrawing Room of No. 12.
Patent yellow (lead oxychloride) was invented by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, a Swedish chemist in c.1770. It is an attrac-tive bright yellow pigment and was hailed as a cheap alternaattrac-tive to orpiment and Naples yellow. The pigment may be readily identified in cross-section by its large fractured translucent crystalline particles.15 James Turner took out a patent for the manufacture of the pigment in England in 1781,16 claiming that it could be used in both water-based paints and oil paints, but in oil, patent yellow has a tendency to discolour and is quite coarse in texture therefore it was not ideal for house painters. It was, however, widely used by coach painters who understood its technical drawbacks. They took care to mix the pigment with a varnish-rich medium and also protected the surface with the application of numerous layers of varnish.
The Craces began trading as coach painters, providing designs for the decoration of coach panels, and would have been very familiar with the working properties this pigment. During the 1820s, patent yellow fell out of use as it was superseded by chrome yellow, a more finely textured bright yellow pigment.17
Previous research carried out by Ian Bristow in the South Withdrawing Room of No. 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields established that the walls of this room were decorated c.1813 using var-nished patent yellow. This scheme is illustrated in a watercolour by J.M. Gandy painted in 1825 and Bristow established that it was repeated in 1833 when the room was slightly altered.18 The use of the unusual pigment patent yellow at No. 12 some five years earlier is significant, as it suggests that Soane had already experimented with a bright yellow for the decoration of the Withdrawing Room of No. 12 Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
Helen Dorey’s archival research has established that the first floor was extensively refurnished in 1807–8.19 Carpets and furniture supplied by John Robins are detailed in his account for 13 May 1807 including: ‘A brown & yellow &c. Brussells Carpet made up with border to close fit the drawing rooms’.
The furniture, also supplied by John Robins, included two sec-ond-hand card tables, ‘A wainscot pillar & claw table’, ‘8 neat cane seat Bamboo Chairs, Japan’d etc.’, ‘Two Square Turkish Ottoman Foot Stools with best Materials Coverd with Druggit
& Carpet border on Round Balls finish’s Black, and four fur-ther Bamboo Japan’d chairs as before’. In 1808 the room was fitted with yellow curtains ‘a set of yellow &c. Moreen draper-ies, fringed with Grecian fringe for Drawing Room windows’
(£11 16s 6d), and a ‘japaned pole cornice 21ft 7 inches long with Balls at the end, laths & fastenings’ (£3 0s 0d).
The reference to ‘drawing rooms’ (plural) suggests that at this date, if not before, the rear first-floor room was no longer used as a bedroom and both rooms functioned as drawing rooms: an arrangement later replicated on the first floor of No. 13. The bill also mentions ‘Japanning two Trypods Black and Gold’ (£2 2s 0d). The list of new furnishings and the amount of japanned furniture20 suggests that the two draw-ing rooms had an oriental feel. John Robins had collaborated with John Crace between 1801 and 1810 to supply furniture for Soane at the Bank of England and Pitzhanger Manor.
Decoration 6, a varnished bright patent yellow, can there-fore be dated to the 1807 refurbishing of the two Withdrawing Rooms. The colour scheme used to decorate the wall faces may indicate the influence of earlier chinoiserie schemes executed at Woburn Abbey (Chinese Dairy) and Brighton Pavilion, although the furnishing of the room clearly indicates that the decoration was intended to be neoclassical in style.
The actual decoration of the two Withdrawing Rooms of No. 12 was probably undertaken at some point before the installation of new carpet and furniture in May and June 1807. It is suggested that the ‘ornamental painting’ cleaned and repaired by the Craces’ painters at this time was perhaps the recently discovered c.1792 sky ceiling. The Decoration 7 scheme is a replication of Decoration 6, and was probably executed in 1809–10 to freshen up the existing scheme upon completion of the building works to the second floor of No. 12.
On moving into No. 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields three years later, Soane replicated the arrangement of the two Withdrawing Rooms. He simply repeated the varnished patent yellow dec-oration and installed his existing furniture and curtains. The discovery of this vibrant yellow scheme in the Withdrawing Room of No. 12, executed some five years before it was repeated in the Withdrawing Room of No. 13, is highly sig-nificant. By this date Soane had already established his own decorative convention: the use of dark red for dining rooms and studies, and yellow for the decoration of drawing rooms.
This is illustrated in his decoration of the interiors of Pell Wall Hall in Shropshire (1822–28).